By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, July 3, 1998; Page A19

Shouldn't Americans feel especially good this Fourth of July? After all, there was our president in China invoking the words of the Declaration of Independence -- "our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor" -- to argue for "freedom of speech, association and religion" and to condemn the massacre at Tiananmen Square nine years ago as "wrong."

It was good that President Clinton did this. But there was a hollowness to the exercise. The empty feeling was reinforced by the mad spinning of White House officials who wanted us to know how extraordinary it was that the president was allowed to say such words to a Chinese television audience. What a victory for free speech!

The president picked up the theme in his remarks at Beijing University. "I believe the kind of open, direct exchange that President Jiang and I had on Saturday at our press conference -- which I know many of you watched on television -- can both clarify and narrow our differences and, more important, by allowing people to understand and debate and discuss these things, can give a greater sense of confidence to our people that we can make a better future."

But who in China is being allowed to "debate and discuss these things"? Absolutely no one. To exercise free speech in China, to get on television expressing such a dissenting view, you have to be -- well, the president of the United States.

Worse, this risks reducing fundamental moral struggles to mere "differences." You see, Americans believe that people should be free to express their views. President Jiang believes he can kill or jail those who say something he doesn't like. No big deal. We can work it out. Now, what about that nice little trade deal we were talking about earlier?

Let's stipulate a few things. The debate about China is not partisan -- it splits both parties -- so be wary of partisan attacks on the president when he returns. If someone assails Clinton's China policy, make sure you know what he or she said about President Bush's China policy, of which Clinton's is an imitation.

Second, there is no doubt that China is undergoing extraordinary change and that Chinese society is more open now than it was two decades ago. American policy should encourage this change. That means, to use the popular term, American "engagement" with China. It also means accepting that democratic change may not occur as rapidly as we would like.

But it does not mean pretending that public relations gestures are signs of a democratic revolution. Jiang may have given our president air time, but on the fundamentals the Chinese leader did not move an inch. That's why this trip, for all the atmospherics, has not impressed those for whom human rights remain a passion.

Clinton had to say something about human rights "to redeem the trip," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in an interview, "because the Chinese dealt him several humiliations" -- on arms control and on trade, with arrests of political dissidents and with their refusal to let a Radio Free Asia correspondent fly into China with the president.

Pelosi's conclusion about the president: "He said just enough for U.S. public consumption but not enough to make a difference for human rights in China." She fears that our current policy is trying to create a "post-Tiananmen era" that relegates the massacre to a past from which we should move on. Her alternative view is more compelling: "As long as people are being held in prison for the peaceful expression of their religious and political beliefs and dissidents are not free to speak freely in China, the Tiananmen Square era continues."

Ah, but isn't China now peaceful and bustling? "The reason we haven't seen another Tiananmen Square in China since 1989," says Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), one of his party's leading human rights advocates, "is that never again will the Communist government let so many people gather in the same place. This is not progress."

With China running a $50 billion trade surplus with the United States -- that's a billion a week we're shipping over there, and the amount is rising -- the Chinese government might pay attention to people such as Cox, Pelosi and the many other Americans not impressed by television extravaganzas and who listened to the very tough words that President Jiang spoke between those telegenic smiles.

What matters is what China does after President Clinton comes home -- on human rights, on trade, on Taiwan and Tibet, on nuclear arms proliferation. If Jiang's government does nothing (or, worse, if it regresses) this trip will be a setback disguised as a triumph, momentarily pleasant but ultimately unfulfilling.